THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—It is refreshing to see Lord Hugh Cecil's candour in defending with moderation a Movement with which his name is so popularly connected. I notice that he no longer brings up the question of the Apostolic Succession, once "the first plank in the Tractarian platform," but since so completely shot dead by Bishop John Wordsworth's Ordination Problems
and its successors that in niyrIa.st letter to you I "defied' the g.P.Z.K. publishers to " hook (of which they still have some copies) so derogatory to the Church's fame. Lord Hugh, however, defends the indefensible. Tract Xe of Newman, which was based on a similar attempt by Father Sancta Clara to explain in a. Tridentine sense the Thirty-Nine Articles. Laud forbade that book to .be published ; and Newman, for reproducing the sophistical arguments of that book in Tract XC, was driven not only out of Oxford Uni- versity but out of the Church of England by, the constituted authorities ! Does Lord Hugh seriously defend what Newman in later life did not himself defend ? Again, Lord Hugh defends the Church Assembly, which empowered him to Champion their New Prayer Book of 192728 in the House of Commons. Does Lord Hugh know that not only did his organ, The Church Times, regard it as a special " Providence " that his book was thrown out, but an Anglo-Catholic deputa- tion waited on the ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament to "oppose' the Prayer nook' of 1927" (Bp. Knox, Tractarian Movement, p. 362)?
Is Lord Hugh even aware of another more important fact : that in 1883, the year of the Oxford Movement, ". one-half" Of England owned the National-Church, Whereas today not so much as " One-twelfth " ? (Archdeiteon A. E. J. Rawlinson, C. of E. ce Ch. of Christ, p. 87n.; Longmans, 1925). These are alarming facts, even from Lord Hugh's point of view.—
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